I feel like Jones is probably the guy who gets bumped up over Reynolds but we’ll see. We could also see the return of someone like Yedlin.
Updated…. (Accounting for Maloney, Pefok, Booth, and Dest injuries; note that Adams is still a question mark). COPA AMERICA GK Matt Turner, Ethan Horvath, Drake Callender (Steffen) RB Joe Scally, DeJuan Jones (Lennon) CB Chris Richards, Cameron Carter-Vickers (Zimmerman) CB Tim Ream, Miles Robinson (Trusty, McKenzie) LB Jedi Robinson, Kristoffer Lund (Tolkin, Wiley) MF Tyler Adams, Yunus Musah (Cardoso) MF Weston McKennie, Luca de la Torre (Acosta, Sands) RM Tim Weah, Brenden Aaronson (Zendejas) AM Gio Reyna, Malik Tillman (P. Aaronson, Mihailovic) LM Christian Pulisic (CPT) (Yow) FW Haji Wright, Josh Sargent, Brandon Vazquez (Balogun, Pepi) Note: Johnny Cardoso called up if Adams is a no-go. OLYMPICS GK Gabriel Slonina, Patrick Schulte (Brady) RB Bryan Reynolds (Harriel, Davis) CB Mark McKenzie ^ CB Walker Zimmerman (CPT) ^, Noah Cobb (Dietz, Campbell) CB Auston Trusty ^ LB Kevin Paredes, Caleb Wiley (Tolkin, Bello, Gomez) MF Gianluca Busio, P. Aaronson MF Johnny Cardoso, A. Morris MF Tanner Tessman (McGlynn, Vargas, Puktsas, Edelman, Atencio, Bassett) FW Ricardo Pepi, Duncan McGuire (Kahveh, Downs) FW Folarin Balogun, Griffin Yow (Cowell, Gutierrez, Sullivan, Esmir, Luna, Barajas)
Unfortunately, DeJuan Jones also just suffered a grade 3 hamstring injury that Caleb Porter said will keep him out "four weeks minimum."
What’s up with Marlon Fossey? He didn’t play in the last game but seems due for a call up. Brooks Lennon should also be considered. If not, then, I guess Yedlin.
Feels like it would probably be Yedlin with no camps between now and the Copa America to integrate someone new.
If a grade 3 hamstring tear, return would be more like 6 months. Difficult to come back from a Grade 2 in 4 weeks.
ouch. we may have to bring Scally to Copa. American Soccer Analysis rates Herrera #1 fullback in MLS. Hollingshead and Lennon are not far behind. Gregg would bring Lennon because he has been in youth program. Unfortunately, he is prone to error, I believe. Howvr, Berhatler would likely bring Yedlin because he is a known quantity (to him,not me).
Herrera filed a switch so he wouldn’t be an option. With the Jones injury it will be one of Yedlin, Moore, or Reynolds most likely.
If it was a lesser event I’d want fossey to get a roll out but we will go with yedlin to keep it safe
yup, and Copa is very much run now mode. If this was even gold cup I’d be going to bat for fossey but it’s not that. We need a reliable hand here
Gregg has talked openly about his admiration for Lennon. In fact, was named to important WCQing rosters. I haven't watched Atlanta enough this year to know how he's playing. I'll have to take folks' word for it. He does offer a lot of versatility on top of just being able to play RB. Is he better than Scally? I don't know. Brooks Lennon and Miles Robinson Named To United States Men’s National Team for World Cup Qualifiers | Atlanta United FC (atlutd.com) SSFC Spotlight: Brooks Lennon enters fullback conversation - Stars and Stripes FC “You can tell he’s played the amount of games in Major League Soccer that he has,” Berhalter said in December. “He has that experience to him, even though he’s a young player, and that’s fun to see in the fullback position. I think he’s a solid, solid fullback.” We know what Yedlin offers as the backup. Berhalter seems to really like him. At the moment, he's our most capped senior USMNTer. Sometimes folks act like Yedlin is 38 and has nothing left in the tank to offer. He's only 30. And we knew that if Scally, Reynolds, etc. didn't develop.............then we were thin at RB. We have depth at that position, but no option after Dest is at his level. No matter who we pick................. [So thin that somebody above mentioned rehashing the Adams at RB experiment. Never mind that this board lost its ever-loving mind when Berhalter did that. Before Dest committed and Scally emerged. And of course, Adam's heat map in that game showed he spent much of his time in CM anyway.] Yedlin is already in rarified area in terms of caps. His next cap draws him level with Eddie Pope, Brad Friedel, and Eddie Lewis. I think folks basically have this right. If Dest really can't play this summer, then its going to be Scally and one of the guys Berhalter has worked with this year. Moore and Jones were at January camp. He likes Lennon and Yedlin. Why did Berhalter say he brought Moore and Jones to January camp with the kids? Because he wasn't going to have Dest in the Nations League against Jamaica, and wanted to work with those guys as potential options. So we're in the same situation here. Olympics will be the guys that the Olympic coaches have worked with. Reynolds, Harriel, etc. I personally think Harriel kinda flies under the radar here.
Dest is going to be a huge loss for Copa. Super bummed. I assume GB will call on Yedlin... which is OK I guess. He has a ton of experience and has played some quality games for the USMNT. At this point I think anyone that takes Dest's roster slot is a significant down-grade... including Scally.
Update on one of our group stage opponents at the Olympics: Australia, a semi-regular at this level was knocked out in the group stage. For now, it looks like the knockouts will likely be: Qatar Vs Japan Saudi Arabia vs Vietnam South Korea vs Indonesia Uzbekistan vs Iraq or Taijikstan The 2 finalists advance to the olympics and the winner of the third place game will book a playoff against Guinea.
Dest is an OK player for international play. But he is not a "huge loss" as there are a number of OK players, just OK in a different way, available and it would be little loss to move to one of those other OK players. The step down from any of our best players to second best is not a huge step but, rather, it is just a little baby step. The thing that concerns me most is the loss of the top two or three players for any position. The loss of one, two or even three of the top players from any position only matters as much as it does because Gregg is not the most adaptable coach there is and force changing of personnel requires adaptability in coaching. Personnel wise we have the depth we need except for the one person wearing the coach's hat and there a loss might well be an upgrade.
Iraq beat the Saudi's to jump ahead of them into the C1 spot while the Saudi's dropped to C2. Matchups are now: Qatar vs Japan Iraq vs D2 (either Vietnam or Uzbekistan, I'd bet Vietnam) South Korea vs Indonesia Saudi Arabia vs (either Vietname or Uzbekistan, I'd go with the Uzbeks) If I were projecting, for now, I tend to think Japan and South Korea grab tickets as per usual by winning their QF's and SF's (I'm guessing against Iraq and the Saudi's respectively) and then the third place game is a rematch between Iraq and Saudi Arabia......and whomever wins that, plays Guinea for a ticket.
I just totally disagree w/ your assessment of Dest. He is our best FB overall. Furthermore, he can be trusted to play well on either side so it allows us to bring in an additional MF or F rather than worrying about having backups at both RB and LB.
Scally can.........................play both sides as well. He's played on the left in the Bundesliga and with the national team. I'm not sure Dest is better than Antonee. Statistically, Antonee has either had the best or 2nd best season of any left back in the Premier League this season. Dest is by far our best natural RB, and the drop off to the next guy is steep. So yes, his loss is a challenge. I honestly do think that Dest's injury means Scally is a certainty for the Copa. To start or be a backup that can play on both sides. To me, the Olympics are seemingly out of the equation for him.............................
jedi is arguably the best lb in the best league in the world while dest has taken about a week to be discarded in two different top 4 leagues. does that make jedi the best lb in the world, or that dest at his ceiling/highest possible level? of course not. and it wouldnt matter anyways- our only concern in terms of the national team is how good any given player is in relation to our other players. so while i absolutely agree he is overrated by many here in general terms its a huge loss. not even in the step down to scally (however steep you think that is), but we had 3 fbs who are tested at reasonably high levels and now we have two. there is going to be attrition whatever we end up doing. .
Agreed as both are very different. Dest is our best right back I doubt he's a better left back even with a great season playing there (but at a lower level league then Jedi. We would be in the same amount of trouble if Jedi was out as we'd have to choose between moving Dest (if he was healthy and Jedi injured) or picking left back and leaving Dest alone. The weird thing is we used to always move right backs over to the left because of so many better right backs but it's starting to change or has changed and left back is becoming better. In another year there may be a legitimate challenger to Jedi while right back is kind of a near term problem.
This seems a bit unfair, even granting some license for exaggeration. I agree he was very quickly discarded at AC Milan (the year they reached the Champions League semi-finals), but that description doesn't really apply to his time in La Liga. Dest started a good majority of Barcelona's games his first season there, and started nearly every game for Barcelona for the first few months of the following season until Xavi took charge. Then he was relegated to a rotational player for the rest of the season, and then pushed out of the team entirely by Xavi. Xavi obviously didn't like him, but he was very much in favor for over a year prior to that on one of the elite teams on the planet, and his manager for that first season Ronald Koeman publicly commented later that he didn't understand Xavi's decision to sideline Dest.
What makes Dest special is simple: he's a uniquely talented attacking weapon, period, in the past his defense was a liability, period, it seems like its improved, but it may just be the league, the reason I put him on my "can't get hurt half dozen" list is simple, there is no one on the roster that can offer what he can on the right side in the attack, period. No one (unless you move Pulisic there, and they are still, different players, but equally effective attacking). We have no replacement, the attack from the right will be orders of magnitude weaker than it would have been if he'd avoided getting hurt, when you add that Weah has had another disappointing club season, it underlines that (and this time, unlike in '21-'23, Weah hasn't been as effective w/the national team, regardless of club form). It's a HUGE loss, would I list it as #1? No. But he's in my group with Pulisic, McKennie, Adams, Weah (when he's in form) and Reyna of guys who we simply cannot replace, and whom the dip is gigantic when they are out. It's just a huge bummer to lose someone this close to the end of the season, we were just a couple of weeks from safety, and boom, a guy whose only gotten hurt like once the past 3 years, got hurt. So frustrating. Have to hope Pulisic's rare health sticks, and we don't lose anyone else. Oddly, we've been remarkably healthy amongst the XI of late. Hopefully it holds through June and July (other than Dest).